Parking enforcement refers to the activities and measures implemented by authorities or designated personnel to regulate and ensure compliance with parking regulations.
The primary goal of parking enforcement is to manage and control the use of parking spaces, maintain order, and promote the efficient utilization of available parking facilities. This typically involves monitoring and enforcing rules related to parking duration, designated zones, payment requirements, and other relevant regulations.
Often employed by local government agencies or private entities, Parking enforcement officers (PEOs), traffic wardens, or police officers play a crucial role in this process. They patrol designated areas, issue citations or tickets for violations, and may tow vehicles that violate parking rules.
Parking enforcement helps maintain traffic flow, ensures access to public spaces, and generates revenue for municipalities through fines and penalties for non-compliance with parking regulations.
It also helps to ensure safety by watching out for unwanted vehicles that could be dangerous to the site's environment. Without parking enforcement, unruly drivers take advantage, leading to double-parked cars, temporary parking on the grass, vehicles blocking fire lanes, a shortage of guest spots, and possibly even parking spaces being converted into businesses on the go.
Parking Enforcement can contribute to growth & economic development in many ways as well:
Depending on the type, size, and use of the site, different types of parking enforcement are used:
1. Free Parking Enforcement: Typically, companies specializing in towing, booting, immobilizing, and ticketing offer complimentary parking enforcement services. They legally collect fees and fines from vehicle owners for improper parking.
2. Self-Enforcement: Self-enforcement parking services are carried out by your staff, management, homeowners association (HOA), board of directors (BOD), or Parking Committee.
3. Paid Parking Enforcement: Patrol businesses, security companies, and parking monitoring services are the primary providers of paid parking enforcement. Parking Enforcement Officers (PEOs) are often given the task of patrolling a specific area and handing out violations.
Depending on the type of parking enforcement needed, some factors should be considered to make the right decision:
Paired with Residential security systems, Pay-by-License Plate parking meters, mobile payment apps, or mobile scan-to-pay web platforms, LPR is ideal for on-street and off-street parking enforcement as it uses license plate information for cloud-based instant verification of valid parking sessions.
Platenforce is a Parking Enforcement Solution that uses LPR to validate license plates on the go, using Picopak, a small and fast AI-powered LPR Camera that captures license plate numbers at speeds up to 155 mph and performs the digitalization process autonomously.
Using LPR, patrol officers no longer need to manually check each license plate against a database or take photos of infractors; LPR cameras mounted on enforcement vehicles allow them to instantly record and associate the license plate and an image to a violation notice, making the process faster and more accurate.
This efficiency increment allows your parking enforcement agents to reach a wider area in less time or focus on other tasks with the time saved. Less time patrolling can help decrease harassment from angry parkers.
Hampstead, a centrally located suburb of Montreal, Quebec, has started looking for a solution to improve parking enforcement efficiency.
Previously, the town used paper permits for parking enforcement. Residents had paper permits for their on-street parking. This resulted in an efficiency rate of about 40%. The goal was to increase this efficiency rate to about 90%.
Residents could park overnight without paying for parking, causing issues with permit enforcement and general frustration among locals. Additionally, the town's daily coverage capability for parking permit checking was limited to about 3/4 of the area. The whole area had to be checked in a 2-day span, and that task could take 100% of the productive employee´s time, leaving no room for other activities, such as ensuring parking safety.
An LPR-based Parking Enforcement solution was integrated with the town citizen web portal, allowing residents to purchase permits online. Now, the cameras automatically scan license plates while the software checks the permits in real time.
This transition eliminated the need for paper tickets and significantly streamlined the enforcement process.
Thanks to this implementation, the City of Hampstead can now read 400 plates in 2 hours and up to 2,000 license plates in 24 hours.
This means an upsurge in enforcement efficiency of 95%! The team can patrol the whole town two times a day and have extra time to check on parks and do security checks, which is very different from before LPR when they could only cover 3/4 of the area daily.
The new system allows for enhanced enforcement since it makes it easier to identify cars without permits, preventing overnight parking without payment.
Resource allocation is also more efficient now that agents have more time to ensure parking safety, respond to alarms and other calls, and conduct surveillance, which benefits the town overall.
LPR-based parking enforcement is ideal for public or private operators in cities, universities, hospitals, corporate campuses, and airports.
Survision Platenforce is our Cloud-based Mobile Parking enforcement solution designed to identify non-compliant vehicles “on the go”, whether payment-based or private access scenarios.
High performance LPR camera for the most challenging sites such as very short distances and open angles
More affordable, smaller yet very fast and precise LPR camera, ideal for barrier or totem embedding
The world's smallest LPR camera for security and on-street parking control
Ideal for ITS and Tolling, this powerful camera works at large distances and very high speeds
Compact and affordable LPR camera with 4G connection, designed for Smart city
Despite the country or region, even Vanity Plates!
Lights, protection and connection are integrated into the LPR Cameras
LPR is performed in the LPR cameras firmware
LPR can be triggered by external device or by the license plate itself
Neural networks are used to learn from every plate read and increase performance over time
Up to 155 mph (250 km/h)
The shortest distance (from 5ft!) at the highest accurate reading speed (20ms)
You do not need more than 1 Survision LPR camera to get LPR working
Software tools for system integration or app building
Satisfied or refunded!
We ensure a certain range of LPR reading rates that will satisfy your needs, burn it in a contract and then make it true; otherwise we will refund 100% of your payment.
Give us a call; we can help. No question is too big. We love to talk about even the smallest details when it comes to LPR. We've got answers for you. Our expert team is a great resource for information, just a phone call away.